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Turkey to require additional reporting on e-commerce operations

As part of efforts to strengthen its monitoring of e-commerce in Turkey, the Ministry of Finance's Revenue Administration published a draft General Communiqué on the Tax Procedure Lawon its website on September 15 that, if adopted as expected, would require certain taxpayers to provide additional information on their e-commerce operations.

Taxpayers affected

Intermediary service providers: Providers of software, hardware or technical infrastructure via an intermediary service that acts as an agent for the performance of purchase, sale, rent or distribution of goods and services over the Internet would be required to provide the Revenue Administration with the domain names through which the intermediary service is provided, as well as the personal information of the seller. Additionally, the dates on which the intermediary services were provided, amounts paid, as well as transaction dates would also need to be reported.

Advertising services agencies: Agencies who provide their services over the Internet would be required to provide the name and Turkish identity or tax number of both the advertisers and Internet address owners, the Internet addresses of the published advertisements and the fee collected for the advertising service.

Banks: All banks would have additional reporting requirements for Internet purchases by their customers.

Cargo and logistics businesses: Such businesses would be required to provide the name and Turkish identity or tax number and address information of the shipper, the total number of deliveries, the total delivery amount, payment method, and the total payment regarding payments executed at the door.

Conclusion

While it will not enter into force until the date of its official publication, we expect that the communiqué will be adopted in its current form without substantial changes, taking effect from January 1, 2016. In the meantime, affected taxpayers should take steps to ensure that they will be able to comply with the additional reporting requirements.

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